


pull me back to earth

by Suicix



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Dissociation, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3939460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suicix/pseuds/Suicix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wade doesn't completely understand it when this happens, when <i>Stardust</i> happens. But he tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pull me back to earth

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Friendly Fires song of the same name, although the respective moods of this fic and that song are pretty different to say the least.
> 
> this is a bit of a mess, mostly. i made an attempt. i also made a subtle(??? is it subtle???) reference to team rhodes scholars - who i miss dearly, although cody here clearly doesn't - near the end there. cool.

All the lights are off when Wade returns home. He pads through the apartment in the dark, expecting to come across a sleeping Cody in bed when he flicks the bedroom light on, but – no. The bed is as immaculately made as it had been left that morning and there aren’t any signs of movement from anywhere else in the room either.

When Wade checks the living room for his boyfriend and again comes up with nothing, he begins to actually consider calling out for Cody, but then remembers that perhaps that isn’t a very good idea. It certainly wasn’t the last time he did: it turned Cody into an even more volatile, vulnerable shaking mess than he already was.

Or, turned Stardust into that, rather. Because he’s _not_ Cody when he’s like this, as emphasised by the varying whispering-chanting-yelling that Wade was faced with when he used that name, not knowing what was going on because he’d never seen it happen before. Since then he’s learned – a little, at least – but he still isn’t totally sure how to handle it when his boyfriend dissociates because what if it gets out of hand? What if Cody ends up genuinely hurting himself without really realising and there’s nothing Wade can do to stop it?

Wade creeps into the spare bedroom, and _ah_ – his thoughts are correct.

He can make out the shape of Cody on the floor, curled up into himself, probably (hopefully) past the initial violent stage that precedes some of his outbursts, and Wade wants to reassure him, wants to be able to reach out and touch, but he can’t. He knows he can’t.

Cody doesn’t like to be touched when he’s like this. There’s a whole other brand of Stardust where it’s touch that brings him back, where he’s excitable and cackling and nonsensical and Wade’s hand strong on his arm and Wade’s voice attempting to be calm and collected in his ear are what helps him out of it, but this is not it.

This is when the drawers of the dresser are pulled out and their contents are strewn out all over the floor. Wade has no idea what Cody – Cody’s _body_ – is looking for in there, and no idea if it gets found. The room is like that now, a disorder of the most miscellaneous of items scattered across the carpet, only their shapes visible in the shadow.

But Cody is quiet; he won’t be reacting to much any time soon. So it’s fine to switch on the light, and – it’s shocking, really, what Wade finds.

It’s like – Wade doesn’t know. He hasn’t seen this before. It seems Cody’s tried to colour himself in, almost, inked himself up like the dark of the night sky with what Wade thinks is body paint – long, stark, angry smudges of black up his arms and across his chest, his back. He _hopes_ it’s body paint, at least: an impulse buy in a brief moment of depersonalisation. A coping method, perhaps, though Wade can’t even begin to understand how it could constitute coping.

The worst of it has come and gone, had ended before Wade even arrived back home. There isn’t anything he can do but go back to their bedroom, back to their bed, and provide a shoulder for when Cody is back.

Wade sets his book aside immediately when the door eventually creaks open.

“Has it finished?” he asks, not daring to say much else. There’s no telling whether it actually has, though, because although there are patterns, there are also anomalies.

“Yeah, I’m... I’m in control again.” Cody smiles weakly and Wade sees him shiver a little. “It was a rough one, though. Blacked out for... I don’t know how long. A good few hours there, I guess. That’s what it felt like, anyway.”

Wade nods. His eyes roam across to the paint – the what he _thinks_ is paint – on Cody’s body, and Cody’s follow.

“Oh, I... huh. That happened again. Shit.”

“It’s happened before?” Wade’s eyebrows furrow; he frowns. He’s never been there when it has.

“Just a couple of times. Paint. I don’t know why.”

Another nod. Wade doesn’t really know what to say about it. “You should have a shower. Get it washed off. I’ll – I’ll do it.”

Before Cody can move towards the bathroom, Wade is out of bed and on his way over himself, pulling towels from the chair by the door and making his way through the hallway. He gets the shower switched on, gets the temperature nice and warm and how he knows Cody likes it.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

The question hangs in the air for a moment.

“Uh. Yeah. Please.”

They’re silent other than the sound of the shower. Wade half wants to say something, wants to tell Cody that he’s fine and all right and loved and definitely, _definitely_ real, but lets his arms wrapping around Cody say it instead, lets the way he washes away the paint say it instead, lets the towels that he dries Cody off with afterwards say it.

Cody slips under the bedcovers after Wade does, seeming absolutely drained. It’s tiring just to _see_ him like this: like all the life has been sucked out of him by a black hole or this _Stardust_ , who or whatever that is.

“Thank you,” he says, quiet, and Wade almost gives a _You’re welcome_ in response but no, he reckons that would just push Cody away from himself again. Would fill him with memories of betrayal and defeat and almosts. Wade hopes he’ll never inspire such thoughts.

“No problem,” is what he eventually settles for, and he pulls Cody closer into him. “Just... I don’t know. Remember I love you. Remember you’re real.”

Cody nods and lets his head rest on Wade’s chest. “I try.”

He does, Wade knows, and Wade tries too. Tries to be of some use, tries to recognise patterns in what’s happening and tries to help Cody work his way out of it if it’s possible.

It can’t be enough, though. It can’t completely make things stop, can’t make this go away or prevent it from happening, but it’s still something. It’s a reminder.


End file.
